


ahora quién llama al olvido (ahora quién vuelve a contar estrellas)

by Lire_Casander



Series: gotas en un laberinto [7]
Category: 9-1-1: Lone Star (TV 2020)
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Assault, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Lines Taken Right Out f The Original Script, M/M, Medical Procedures, Mentions of Cancer, Minor Character Death, More Leaning Into The Hurt Side Of Things, Original Character(s), mentions of assault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 19:14:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28961535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lire_Casander/pseuds/Lire_Casander
Summary: turns out, waking up from a coma is the easiest thing to do. living after that, well, carlos findsthatto be a bit harder
Relationships: Carlos Reyes/TK Strand
Series: gotas en un laberinto [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2112216
Comments: 22
Kudos: 78
Collections: Carlos Reyes Week 2021





	ahora quién llama al olvido (ahora quién vuelve a contar estrellas)

**Author's Note:**

> beta’ed by [meloingly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meloingly/profile). without her, this wouldn't make any sense; in fact, it wouldn't even be posted. she's proofread this twice in a single day, even though it's a monstrosity. thank you from the very bottom of my heart, darling. i don't know where i'd be if it weren't for you.
> 
> any remaining mistakes are my own
> 
> title from _seis_ by maldita nerea. it roughly translates into _now who’s calling on oblivion (now who’s counting stars once again)_
> 
> written for [carlos reyes week 2021](https://carlosreyesweek.tumblr.com/post/631367369198092288/announcing-carlos-reyes-week), **_day #7: wild card_**
> 
> sequel to [here at the end of the road (maybe happiness is worth the chance of a bitter end)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26681020). i heavily suggest reading the previous fic because it would make more sense that way. i know it’s long, but i would highly appreciate it!

Carlos groans in the darkness that surrounds him, the light at the far end of the room dissolving in a fit of swirls and whirlwinds, as he tries to squeeze the fingers covering his hand. It’s difficult for him to maintain his strength when the darkness wants to claim him again — sequestering his consciousness and nudging him back to that empty room where he’s spent the best part of the latest days of his life. Carlos fights back; he doesn’t want to stay in that place again, listening to the people he loves despairing as he canʼt reach them. 

He needs to get out, and it seems that the only way to do that is _through_. 

He listens to TK begging for him to wake up, to come back, and Carlos would love nothing more than to hold TK in his arms again and reassure him that everything will be fine. Even though Carlos has the inkling that things are most definitely _not_ okay right now — if the memories he’s been visiting are anything to go by, apparently he got beaten to a pulp by a couple of teenagers who almost killed him — he firmly believes that, once he’s able to open his eyes and leave this darkness, along with TK they will overcome any obstacle life throws at them. 

Even the surely complicated recovery of injuries as grave as he’s sure his are.

TK’s voice flickers; Carlos recognizes the tell-tale signs of crying in his words. _Wait for me_ , he thinks. _I’m trying my best to come back._

He closes his eyes, even though there’s nothing that he wants more than to keep them open in case some light shows up in the middle of this blackness, and he wills himself to wake up. He wills himself to come back to TK.

There’s a pull that’s stronger than anything he’s ever felt, forcing him to open his eyes once again, and before he knows what’s going on he’s twirling around in what looks like the eye of a hurricane. It’s dizzy and colorful, a powerful mix of everything he’s ever felt and lived through swirling around him in images and bits, pieces of his life that he gets to rewatch from the most recent to the earliest ones. The winding movement makes the memories fly away from him as soon as he sees them — his fight with TK from that night, the moment when Carlos asked him to move in, their first love declarations and the first time they held hands as a couple, and that fateful night underneath the Northern Lights. Carlos reaches out, suspended in the middle of that void, attempting to touch TK’s face in that particular memory, only for it to dissolve in thin air. 

With a start, he realizes that every memory that’s already passed around him has vanished, and he can’t get a grasp on them anymore.

He groans, flapping his arms forcefully, trying to capture the memories that are rapidly disappearing in the whirlwind of the hurricane taking him back, but it’s to no avail. He ends up exhausted and light-headed, unable to catch his past life in his hands, watching as it slips through his fingers like sand in a desert. Carlos doesn’t even blink, avidly taking in all the details he knows by heart — the way TK bounces his leg when he’s nervous and the first time he was introduced to Buttercup and the way Owen Strand is always so proud of his son and the moment when Michelle called to tell him that Iris had disappeared — until the movement stops abruptly and he finds himself floating briefly in thin air before gravity does its trick and he falls, face down and so fast that everything’s a blur around him once again.

There’s nothing to break his fall.

More terrified than ever before in his whole life — fearing that he’s never going to come back to the people he loves and who love him back — Carlos closes his eyes and tries his best to brace for impact.

A faint but bothering light shining directly over his face makes him protest lowly in the back of his throat, and before he knows what he’s doing he’s cracking his right eye open.

“Wha—” he tries to speak, but there’s something preventing him from even moving his lips. He frowns, confused, not knowing exactly what has happened, and he turns his head to the side to assess the situation. 

Only, he can’t even move his neck as it seems to be stuck in some sort of shell. He’s apparently lying on top of a horizontal surface — a bed, most likely — and he can’t feel his legs either.

For a moment, he panics. He doesn’t know where he is — everything’s too white and blinding and it smells funny — and he feels trapped and he can’t speak and everything hurts so much he finds himself wishing for the darkness again. He trashes o

“Hey, sweetie, calm down,” says a warm voice he doesn’t recognize by his side, but he can’t really see who that is. “You have a tube in your throat, that’s why you can’t speak. And you’re wearing a cervical collar, but there’s nothing to worry about. You’re going to be okay.”

Carlos stops moving, the voice wrapping around him like a velvety blanket of comfort and calmness. He still can’t see anything in his peripheral vision, but there’s the weight of a hand on top of his — he finds out he can feel his fingers and wriggle him — and he’s instantly soothed.

“That’s it, you’re doing so well, darling,” the voice keeps saying. “The doctors will be here anytime. Just be patient, okay? I know it’s hard, but believe me, the worst has passed. You’re safe now, and you’re back.”

Carlos frowns, mouthing around the tune. He tries to assess the situation but he comes up empty-handed. There’s a rush of people all at once — he can see white labcoats in his peripheral vision and there are voices telling him that heʼs going to be fine. The same soothing voice that heʼs heard upon waking up urges him to go back to sleep — that once he opens his eyes again heʼll feel better. 

So Carlos obliges, a weird feeling in his gut that he canʼt deny anything to the owner of that voice. 

_Smitten_ , he thinks before darkness claims him again. 

When he comes to, the first thing he notices is that there isn’t any tube stuck in his throat. The second is that there is a doctor standing by the end of his bed, with a soft smile on his face. 

“Welcome back, Carlos,” he greets. “We are all so happy to see you awake.” 

Carlos nods, ignoring the sharp pain in the back of his neck. He cranes his neck until he can see his legs — both in casts even though he doesn’t feel any pain — and he sighs. Now that he can move his head, he can look around; he sees a green-eyed man who looks like he could use a long nap fidgeting nervously on a chair. Carlos fights the urge to reach out and calm him by placing a hand on his knee. Kapinski is right beside that man, staring back at him intently; Carlos is taken aback by how old he looks. He must have been in quite a state, to have made the sturdy officer grow gray hairs in over half of his head. 

Carlos chooses to focus on the doctor once again. He needs answers. He begins speaking, but his voice breaks before he can even form a single word. He coughs and tries again, forcing himself to talk around cracking sounds and a rasping voice. 

“What’s happened, doctor—” He checks the nametag on the doctorʼs lapel, “Martinson?” 

“What do you remember?” the doctor asks. 

“Uh, not much,” Carlos confesses. 

“Let's start with easier questions,” Dr. Martinson says. “What’s your name?” 

Thatʼs an easy one. “Carlos Reyes.” 

“Good, good.” The doctor writes something down on a folder heʼs produced from the foot of the bed. “What’s the last date you remember?” 

Carlos frowns. “Ehm, July 29th?” he guesses. The doctor nods and keeps jotting down notes, but the man on the chair gasps. 

“Itʼs okay, TK,” Kapinski says in a low voice, unlike anything Carlos has ever heard from him. “It can be temporal amnesia. Heʼll remember the last few months soon.” 

“TK?” Carlos purses his lips. “Is that your name?” 

“Now is definitely _not_ the time to joke, Carlos,” the man — _TK_ — chastises him. “It’s not funny.” 

“Iʼm not joking.” 

The doctor stops writing and looks up. “Carlos, you don't know TK?” Carlos shakes his head as slowly as possible to prevent getting dizzy. “Do you know who I am?” Again he shakes his head. “Do you know who this man is?” The doctor keeps going, pointing at Kapinski. 

Carlos tries to smile. “Dan Kapinski,” he says. 

“Okay.” Dr. Martinson nods. “Can you tell me the year? Or how old you are?” 

Carlos frowns as he thinks hard on that. Even if heʼs lost some memories, he would have remembered someone as attractive as this TK but he doesn’t. Maybe they're tricking him because he's been reckless _again_ and has ended up in the hospital. He wonders if that's why Theresa isn’t around — if she’s trying to teach him a lesson. 

“Iʼm almost eighteen,” he says slowly. “Iʼm supposed to enter the Police Academy in about a month and a half. Oh,” he whispers as realization dawns on him. “Will I be able to get in, doctor? It's my dream.” 

He almost misses a gasp coming from the green-eyed man. Carlos frowns, a thought forming in his addled mind as he speaks. “Why is he here?” he asks, pointing at the man he doesn’t know. “I don’t know him.”

The man — _TK_ — lifts his hand to his lips and muffles what sounds like a sob. He looks at him long enough to see him standing up and rushing out, followed by Kapinskiʼs startled words, “TK, wait!” 

“What’s going on?” he demands, now shaken by that reaction. What at first he’d thought was repulse at some stranger watching over his sleep is quickly turning into a full-blown guilt-trip feeling that threatens to eat him from inside.

Carlos is unable to understand what’s going on outside of his mind, and he’s unable to comprehend why all of a sudden the fear he’s felt at being vulnerable in a room with a green-eyed man he doesn’t know is turning into fear of being in that same room _without_ him — with the knowledge that Carlos has undoubtedly hurt the man Kapinski has called _TK_.

A part of his soul fights to crawl outside of him and follow TK wherever he’s going, for he feels like he’s going to drown if he isn’t close to the man who’s just now fled the hospital room where Carlos has woken up with a huge headache and a confusion that’s only growing and growing within each passing minute.

He turns to Kapinski, the only familiar face he recognizes — stoic and closed-off, the way Carlos has always known him — for some advice or comfort, but Kapinski isn’t looking him in the eye. Instead, Thom’s partner has his lips drawn in a thin line as Carlos can see tears pooling in his eyes.

He doesn’t think he’s ever seen Dan Kapinski crying in his whole life.

“What’s going on?” he asks again, this time with an edge to his voice that makes it break someway around the end of the last word, not quite reaching the point to turn it into a question. It sounds more like a wail to his ears, the shattered seams of his existence crumbling down around him as both Kapinski and this doctor who seems to know him avoid looking straight into his eyes. “Can someone please tell me what the _heck_ is going on?”

He tries so hard not to shriek, his throat still sore from the extubation performed what feels like merely seconds ago. Carlos wants answers, and he wants them now — he wants to know why he’s woken up surrounded by strangers and why there was a green-eyed man with beautiful features and a pained expression by his side. He wants to know why he can’t remember that man. He wants to remember the man, dammit.

He _needs_ to remember the man, because apparently not doing so has put a rift between them in a way Carlos hasn’t been aware was possible before — in a way that he can feel in his bones, deep down where only he can touch the tender feeling of being abandoned in the middle of a dark wood without light or help.

Carlos feels like he’s lost in a jungle, and the man who’s just run out of the room is the only beacon to guide him. It’s not something he can explain; he doesn’t have all the answers, he only has questions. But he knows something’s bad is happening.

Finally, Kapinski and the doctor seem to find the strength to stop fidgeting with the truth, and they both look at him.

“Iʼll be very blunt, Carlos,” the doctor explains. Kapinski steps closer to Carlos. “It’s September, not April, and you're not almost eighteen. You've just turned thirty this past summer.” 

Carlos feels his chest tightening as the doctor speaks, Kapinski leaning over him with whispered words, but Carlos doesn’t hear anything. He’s blinking back sudden tears, the first peaks of a panic attack hitting him with fresh thorns. 

He doesn’t notice the moment a nurse enters the room and the drip attached to his left hand starts injecting him with something that makes him sleepy enough that he doesn’t think about anything else.

* * *

He’s surrounded by darkness. It’s comfortable and warm, but Carlos gets the nagging feeling that something isn’t right. He squirms on the bed, still in that limbo between slumber and wakefulness, some beeping bothering his ears. He slowly regains consciousness but he doesn’t open his eyes just yet. 

He feels a weight on his hand that has nothing to do with the drips and the machines attached to his body. Carlos resists the urge to shake it off and heʼs rewarded with a soft rumble when he moves. Fingers wrap around his hand — whoever it is, they're keen on not letting go. Carlos groans lowly, hoping the sound doesn’t give away that heʼs awake. Somehow, this touch feels intimate, too personal — like a secret he wants in. 

Sparks light up in his mind, like a switch wanting to be turned up, but not quite reaching the point where it gets to illuminate the hollow halls of his memory. 

“Shhh,” he hears, a mumble lower than a whisper. “You’re okay. You'll be okay, babe.” 

He recognizes the voice. Deep in his bones, Carlos knows that voice — his soul yearns for it, soaking up the sounds and feeding off the syllables. Somehow, his body knows what his brain refuses to disclose. He doesn’t move; he doesn’t want to disturb whatever peace heʼs living through. 

“Go back to sleep,” the voice says, fingertips caressing his knuckles. “You need your rest.” 

Darkness claims him once again, and this time Carlos doesn’t fight it. 

He has no way to know for how long he has slept, but when he does open his eyes, there’s a thread of light filtering through the blinds. He moves a bit on the bed, only to be stopped when he feels something trapping his right arm. He looks down, eyes still heavy with sleep, and what he sees both startles him and makes his insides turn to goo. 

There’s a brunette head resting on top of Carlosʼ arm, effectively preventing him from moving. He cranes his neck to see and realizes with a start that the head belongs to TK — the man who was there when Carlos woke up, an indefinite amount of time before. TKʼs hand is holding Carlosʼ, and it looks like heʼs spent the night. Carlos should be affronted — after all, he kicked him out — but he isn’t. He’s been feeling a void inside of himself ever since TK followed his shrieks and left the room; that void is slowly filling as he watches the rise and fall of TKʼs chest as he breathes in his sleep. 

“Heʼs worried about you,” he hears from the door. When he looks up, out of the reverie of calmness TKʼs given him, he sees Kapinski and the doctor on the threshold. “I will wake him up. Don’t be mad at him,” Kapinski keeps on. “I told him you wouldn't even notice. He wouldn’t have left anyway.”

“Iʼm starting to think he's stubborn as all hell, and I don't even know him,” Carlos nods. “Don't tell him I woke up. I don't want to upset him.” 

It's evident to him that TK didn’t want him to know he spent the night; it isn’t such a hardship to grant TK that small mercy. Somehow, Carlos thinks he would be miserable if he saw TK crying ever again. 

He closes his eyes, feigning sleep, and listens through Kapinski waking TK up and ushering him outside. Carlos mourns the loss of TKʼs warmth immediately. 

“Theyʼre gone,” the doctor — Lester — announces. “It was a nice gesture, you know. Thanks for making him feel safe. You don't remember it, but that's exactly who you are.” 

Carlos sighs as he opens his eyes again. “A soft pillow?” 

“A caretaker,” the doctor states. “Thatʼs who you are. But this isn't what I came here for. If you're up for it, I would like to talk to you for a bit.” 

Carlos sits up on the bed as much as he can. Doctor Martinson sits on the chair that TK has just vacated; Carlos notices that Kapinski isn’t entering again. He wonders if it has something to do with whatever news the doctor is about to break to him. 

He wishes he would have been wrong. 

Three or four hours later, Carlos is still picking at one loose thread from the hospital bed sheets absent-mindedly. His brain is on overload from the doctorʼs words — apparently heʼs been attacked in his own home and as a result, apart from broken bones all throughout his body, heʼs lost ten years of his life. His nails get stuck around the loose thread, and he sighs. 

He’s seen his mother in the hallway outside his room, chatting with Kapinski and the man who was there when Carlos woke up. He doesn’t really know what she’s doing there — she should be far away, gallivanting through the world and saving people from themselves, not caring about the family she left behind in Austin. Whatever the reason, his mother must have sensed that he didn’t want her around, for she hasn't even attempted to set foot inside — not even when Kapinski has come in, sneaking some chocolate and tamales when no one was looking. Carlos doesn’t need any more drama in his life, not after losing a decade of his life to amnesia. 

He’s barely holding on as it is. The nurses have been in and out of the room, checking his vitals and making sure heʼs as comfortable as he can be, so heʼs been entertained while Kapinski has divided his attention between Carlos himself and the green-eyed man who looked like his whole world has been destroyed after Carlos woke up. Carlos doesn’t know what that manʼs deal is, but he seems positively crushed — Carlos has heard hushed voices outside of his room from time to time, whenever the nurses open the door, and heʼs about to lose it. None of those people, whoever they are, has entered the room to greet him — to see how heʼs faring after spending a week and a half in a coma. 

Carlos shouldn’t be as pissed about it as he is. But the fact that no one from his family has come to visit him — not Theresa, not Michelle, not Iris, and not even Thom — is bothering him quite a lot. He doesn’t really care about his mother; after all, their last argument is still fresh in whateverʼs left of Carlosʼ memories. But Amalia hasn't called either, and that is some red flag. Kapinski has been avoiding him as well, not looking at Carlosʼ in the eye when he dares to enter the hospital room. 

It's only been a few hours, but Carlos is beginning to be really fed up with everything. 

“Hey, Lito,” he hears from the door. When he looks up, he sees Theresa — older, since heʼs lost ten years, his mind supplies — smiling shyly at him. She’s supporting herself on Michelle, whoʼs looking ahead with some hardness in her stare. Carlos thinks that she’s somehow roughed around her edges. “Can we come in?” 

“Of course,” he finds himself replying, a little bit breathless. His lungs are still bruised, so his speech is a bit impaired at the moment. “I bet Thom and Iris are running late because of work, right?” 

“We should wait for Dan,” Michelle says, avoiding answering Carlosʼ straightforward question. “I don’t think I can do this twice.” 

“Honey,” Theresa starts, taking one step forward. “Lester says you're suffering from some sort of memory loss.” 

Carlos needs a moment to understand that Lester is his doctor — he remembers being told that they’re old acquaintances, from having been admitted to this very same hospital several times while on shift. He’s still having a bit of trouble believing that heʼs a cop — and that heʼs forgotten all about it. 

“Yeah.”

“Well, a lot of things have changed in a decade,” Theresa explains. Michelle stocks her head out of the room, undoubtedly looking for Kapinski, who shows up immediately. “We need to catch up.” 

“Lester said we shouldn’t dump too much information on him,” Michelle tries to reason. “We shouldn’t jump-start his memory if it doesn’t come back naturally.”

“I am still here, Michelle,” Carlos scolds her. “I may have a good ton of bones broken and a concussion, but I can still hear properly. When's Thom coming? Why aren't you out patrolling with him, Kapinski? Aren't you partners, ten years in the future?” 

He goes for lightening the mood but he doesn’t miss the way everyone in the room stiffens. 

“Are you sure you don't want TK to be here?” Kapinski asks, more to Michelle than anyone else but Carlos feels it like a personal attack. 

“I don’t even know who this TK is,” he huffs. “I don’t want him here. Maybe the man I was before this,” he gestures around to the machines and the tunes, “maybe that man knew TK. But _I_ don’t. I don't want him here.” 

“Well, even if you're the one on that bed, Carlos Reyes,” Theresa speaks slowly, in a voice that doesn’t let room for counteraction. “You’re not the only one suffering. I know you don't remember much, but TK Strand is also a friend of Michelle’s, and as such he might as well be here supporting her. He isn’t, though, out of respect to you. Although I think he has some right to be upset, given how you're talking about him.” 

Carlos feels his blood boil. All of a sudden he doesn’t want them in the room — he canʼt stand their sight, not when heʼs been so scared and so alone. He breathes in deeply. “You wouldn't know, Theresa. You weren't here when I woke up.” His words are loaded with a vicious grip that heʼs completely aware of. It’s intentional — heʼs never been as terrified as heʼs felt upon waking up surrounded by strangers and ten years older. 

“That’s unfair.” 

Carlos huffs. He isn’t about to give in. 

“Listen,” Michelle sighs. “Since you're asking about Dad and Iris, I think it's safe we talk about them.” Her tone has turned serious, and not in the scolding way she usually employs with him — her eyes are too sad and her lips quiver ever so slightly, as though she’s keeping the tears at bay.

“What about them?” he dares to ask. “Where are they? It's okay if they're out of town. It's not like I will go anywhere anytime soon.” 

Theresa finally reaches the bed, pulling up a chair and sitting down. She immediately grabs one of his hands while Michelle sits next to him on the bed. Kapinski finds a spot by the foot of the bed. Carlos feels surrounded as dread pools in his gut. 

Their sad looks don’t foreshadow anything good. 

“What’s wrong?” 

“Dear, you don't remember,” Theresa starts. Her fingers caress his knuckles. “But a lot had changed in ten years. You entered and finished the Academy,” she keeps going. “Michelle became a paramedic, and Iris started medical school. But some time halfway through that, we, uh. Things changed.” 

Carlos gulps. 

“Thom won't be joining us today,” Kapinski says softly. Carlos wouldn’t have thought Daniel Kapinski capable of anything that's not sharp edges, but apparently he was wrong. “Neither will Iris.” 

“Where—where are they?” 

Michelle exhales. “I still think we shouldn’t—” 

“I want to know, Michelle!” 

“Dad—he—uhm. A few weeks before you finished the Academy,” she stammers. Carlos doesn’t remember a single time when Michelle was as nervous or shaken as heʼs seeing her now. “A few weeks before that, Dad, uh. He passed away, Carlos. Pancreatic cancer.” 

Carlos turns to look at Theresa, disbelief painted in his features. “Is this your idea of a joke?” 

“It isn’t a joke, Lito,” Theresa whispers. “I wish it was, but it isn’t.” 

“And Iris,” Michelle continues, as though now that she’s started she can’t keep the dam closed. “Iris didn't take it nicely. She dropped out of college, began acting weird. She disappeared one night, years ago. She just vanished, and as much as we searched for her, she was nowhere to be found. We found her, three years later, though. She was living on the streets. She’s, ah, she has schizophrenia.” 

“This is not funny, Michelle,” Carlos repeats desperately. “Not funny at all. Please, donʼt—please, I know they're outside, probably hiding. Tell them to enter. This is nonsense.” 

Theresa squeezes his hand tight. “Dear boy—” 

“Don't!” he bellows, withdrawing his hand and lifting it up in the air. He feels wounded in parts of his soul he wouldn’t have thought could be broken. “This canʼt be true! It can't!” 

“His heart rate is spiking,” Michelle says in a neutral voice, no doubt part of her training. Carlos can hear the desperation underneath the professionality, and he yearns to hug her despite how much he is hurting. “Call a doctor. We should get out, or else we risk upsetting him more. Cʼmon, mom.” 

Kapinski nods as the two women leave the room. Carlos begins rocking back and forth, all the memories he thought heʼd have by now clawing their way out of his heart — he will never see Thom again. He will never hear any of his wise words. He will ever have a father figure again — sure, he has Kapinski, but he isn’t Thom. 

_No one_ is Thom. 

There’s a flurry of people then, rushing around and checking and telling orders and ushering Kapinski outside as forcefully as he allows them to. 

There’s a shrieking sound piercing the air, and it isn’t until one nurse leans in over him and tells him to close his eyes and sleep — after tinkering with one of the machines — that Carlos realizes that the sound is him, howling his pain as loudly as he can.

* * *

The days blend together after the worst revelation of his life. Carlos doesn’t want to see anyone — heʼs got enough to think about without the interference of having to cater to his visitorsʼ needs, always fawning over him as though he’s broken. 

He is, but he doesn’t like the reminder. 

He tells Kapinski that no one is to enter the room unless Carlos has asked specifically for them. That means he’s forbidding Theresa from visiting even when she comes with a cheesecake — her way of apologizing. Carlos doesn’t allow Michelle either in the beginning, but after a long conversation with Kapinski he decides to break down his defenses a bit.

“I know you’re hurting, kid,” Kapinski tells him. There’s a small smile playing on his lips, but Carlos knows it’s not a happy one — Kapinski is hurting as well. “But you can’t keep everyone at an arm’s length. You need your family, Carlos. And they _are_ your family. Those people you don’t remember now? They love you, and that might be something your brain forgot, but your soul remembers. I know your soul remembers those people.”

Carlos bites down on his lip but says nothing. 

“Don’t lock yourself up in this cage, Carlos,” Kapinski tells him wisely. “I know we’re not supposed to tell you anything, that your brain needs to reset itself and memories will eventually come back. But you know that’s bullshit. You’re not going to recover on your own, Carlos. Let love help you remember.”

Those words hit home in a way nothing else has before — reaching to his very core when not even Thom’s passing had managed to jumpstart his memory. He nods briefly, his neck still stiff from ten days lying on his back after being beaten down to a pulp. “I don’t know, I just don’t know what to do,” he mutters desperately. “Tell me what to do.”

“You’re not my rookie anymore, Carlos,” Kapinski says, leaning in and patting as gently as he can — awkwardly as hell as well — on Carlos’ arm. “It’s up to you. But if I were you?” he adds with a sly smirk. “If I were you I’d want to see with my own two eyes what my life looked like, ten years in the future.”

Carlos doesn’t know what to say to that, too busy fighting back sudden tears to retaliate properly. Kapinski leaves the room soon after, allowing him a few moments of solace before the whirlwind of nurses and doctors making their rounds fill his existence with noise.

He knows Kapinski is right. He knows he needs to surround himself with the people who love him, even if he doesn’t remember them loving him. And he can’t do that if he keeps pushing them away — Carlos needs to start cutting himself some slack and stop refusing to receive visits under the guise of a hatred that he doesn’t really feel. He’s just terrified that, once those people who claim to love him now find out who he really is — the teenager he remembers being, not the adult they believe he is — he fears that they’ll leave.

He can’t get through this ordeal alone. So he tries. And the first thing he does is ask Kapinski to filter through those who want to visit, and he’ll see from then on.

Carlos enters some sort of dull routine. He wakes up to the sound of a nurse checking his vitals and he eats his breakfast in silence before Kapinski gets in, followed by whoever heʼs deemed suitable for a visit that day. So far, Carlos has endured the soft stares of some officers from the precinct he doesn’t remember working at, and the tight smiles of the 126 firehouse crew — rebuilt from scratch after an explosion left Judd Ryder family-less. He thinks they're a good bunch — Paul keeps looking at him funny, as though he’s trying to read into his soul, and Marjan just jokes lightly about one thing or the other. Mateo, who Carlos remembers from _before_ , simply stands by the door, nervously glancing out from time to time until Judd leans in smoothly and helps him focus. Carlos can't help thinking that there’s something missing; during the whole visit, there’s been this presence looming outside the room, shadows overcast in a way that it makes him think someone might be eavesdropping. Carlos is too tired by the end of the visit to even question it. 

Kapinski is the only fixture in his hospital life. Carlos has seen his mother hovering outside of the room as well, talking to his partner — isn’t it strange, to have been partnered with Kapinski for so long and not being able to remember it — but never entering. He isn’t sure about his feelings on that — in his mind, his last argument with his mother is still fresh but he ignores how his life has evolved or even if he is on speaking terms with her. He has the inkling that they might be. Otherwise, he doesn’t know what to make out of this situation, of his motherʼs presence in the hospital; Lieutenant General Alicia Reyes doesn’t usually waste her time on things she doesn’t deem useful. 

He sleeps for whole nights during his first week at the hospital, his exhaustion and the medicines they're giving him wearing him off. He dreams of being held — of strong arms and plush lips and soft words — but he wakes up alone. Kapinski tells him that it's normal, that those dreams could be memories of his past life, but he doesn’t say anything else. Instead, he leaves Carlos alone with his mother for the first time ever since he woke up after Carlos whines about being bored. 

“How are you feeling today, Carlos?” his mother asks tentatively, taking a seat next to the bed once Kapinski excuses himself out. “The doctor says you're expected to make a full recovery.” 

“I—I don't know,” he answers with a frown. “I know this will come out wrong but, seriously, what are you doing here? Why hasn't Amalia called yet?” A thought crosses his mind briefly, making him shudder. “Is she—has she—” He canʼt even finish that sentence. He isn’t sure he will survive more bad news. 

“Your sister is fine,” his mother says. “She’s just stuck on Parris Island for now, but I think she said sheʼd have a few days off soon.” 

“What are you doing here?” Carlos doesn’t really care about repeating himself. “Are you still my next of kin?” 

“Iʼm as surprised as you are, son.” His mother chuckles humorlessly. “I thought, after everything, that you would have removed me. That you would have listed your boyfriend but—” 

“My boyfriend?” 

“Hasnʼt Kapinski told you anything?” His mother sounds exasperated. “I trust him once, and he doesn’t even—” 

“The doctor said not to disclose any information with me if I didn’t remember it on my own,” Carlos is quick to interrupt her. “Kapinski is just doing what heʼs been told.” 

“That would be a first for him.” 

Carlos surprises himself with a scoff — it's true that Kapinski has yet to follow the rules. “So, you okay with me having a boyfriend? I thought you were against _everything_ going on in my life.” 

His mother fidgets on her chair. She remains silent for longer than Carlos would have expected. “I shouldn’t have said that, and I am so, _so_ sorry. I’m more than okay with your life choices, Carlos,” she whispers. “But I haven't given you any reason to trust me on that. I wasn't around when you began dating him. I never showed any interest in your life. Iʼm so sorry, Carlos. I should have been around. And I shouldn’t have kept him from you while you were in a coma.”

There is so much to unpack in those words that Carlos feels lost for a moment. Not only does he apparently have a boyfriend, according to his mother, but he also has been deprived of said boyfriendʼs presence because of his mother. It’s vicious, and a little bit wild, but Carlos has learned a long time ago that everything revolving around his family will never be _normal_. 

Then, a sudden thought assaults him, making him shiver with its intensity. “We started dating sometime between the last date I remember and the present, right?” he says. “I’d remember him if we started dating _before_. I don’t remember him, do I?”

His mother looks bashful, but she locks her gaze to his. “You don’t remember him, and I’m not sure I’m allowed to tell you anything more, given your doctor’s orders and how distressed you’re right now.”

“I’m not distressed!” Carlos all but cries out, positively contradicting his own words. “And I know what the doctor said. But I need answers!”

“Well,” his mother starts, hands together on her lap. “You actually threw him out, just like everybody else. If you want to know about him, maybe you should begin with allowing him inside.”

Carlos opens his mouth to reply, but he thinks better of it and remains silent. His mother is making a fair point — he has forbidden people he didn’t remember from _before_ from entering his room, unless they came with someone he knew. But there’s one person he told not to come in — one person he banished from his sight — one person who has followed his words to the core.

“Is it TK?” he asks, despite already knowing in his bones that he is right. “Everyone tries to avoid speaking his name when they’re around. I have just seen him once and I might have been a bit too harsh to him.” He purposefully avoids telling his mother that TK has been sleeping in awkward, uncomfortable positions at the hospital when he believed Carlos to be completely asleep.

He doesn’t know why, but he thinks that’s something he should keep to himself, just for now.

His mother shakes her head. “I think he took that at face value, Carlos,” she explains. “I wasn’t around when you woke up, but I’m sure it was a traumatic experience. Being surrounded by people you don’t remember is scary as well. TK surely understands.”

“But if he’s my boyfriend, why hasn’t he tried to fight me to visit? Why hasn’t he fought to be here with me?” The words _when I’m awake_ don’t get past his lips; Carlos feels the tinge of some strange emotion cutting him open in half. He didn’t think he could miss someone he didn’t know, but he sure as hell is missing the touch of a person he doesn’t remember ever touching him.

“I can’t say I know much about your past relationships, son,” his mother tells him with a contrite smile. “But I’d say you don’t remember having healthy relationships if you can’t recognize respect in what TK is doing.”

Carlos frowns. He doesn’t remember having many relationships — maybe a hook-up here and there, but there are ten years he’s lost to the mid of traumatic amnesia — but he thinks his mother might be right. There’s a nagging feeling in the core of his soul screaming at him that he’s been a fool about TK this whole time — that, while he had a right to shoo him out of the hospital room upon waking up completely disoriented, maybe Carlos should have made an effort in getting to know a person who evidently cares enough about him to spend his days and nights watching over him.

“I’ve been a complete idiot, haven’t I?” he muses out loud. It still feels weird, to be able to talk about these things with his mother — he’s still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“I’m neither confirming nor denying those facts,” his mother jokes. “I’m not telling you what to do, Carlos, because you know. You already know that you need to do what’s best for you, what feels _right_. Everyone who matters will understand, and if they don’t, what can I say? I know my son is a brave man who fights for what he thinks it’s fair.”

“How do you know? I’m not sure I’m that man anymore,” Carlos mutters.

“You’ve fought me, and you’ve won, Carlos. That’s how I know.” 

His mother falls silent after that, but she doesn’t move. There’s a lull in the air around them; it doesn’t feel forced, though, and Carlos allows it to stretch further, until there’s no light outside and they're staring at the dusk through the window. 

“I should get going,” his mother says out of the blue. She stands up, leaning in to wrap her hand around Carlosʼ biceps. “Doctor Martinson says they should discharge you soon. I know you're going to need help for a while and that you're going to hate every single second of it, but please give it a thought. You have a full support system backing you up, son. Let us all help you.” 

And with that, she leaves the room.

* * *

Carlos finds out his mother is not wrong when Doctor Martinson barges into his room, followed by Kapinski, a few days later with good news — he’s being discharged once all the paperwork is sorted.

“You’ll need help for a while,” he announces, paperclip in place as he plants himself firmly by the end of Carlos’ bed, something Carlos has come to hate. He’s found out that he doesn’t like the distance that single movement puts between himself and the rest of the world; he’s come to appreciate the closeness of people he wouldn’t have thought he’d appreciate — people he doesn’t remember but who, just like Kapinski told him, his soul knows and longs for.

That’s why he’s faked ignorance whenever TK spends the night, entering the room aided by the darkness only broken by the dim light of emergency lights, and why he doesn’t say a thing on the mornings he wakes up before TK has been able to leave, protected by the confusion that follows Carlos upon waking up. Somehow, Carlos _feels_ TK is where he should be — TK is doing something that Carlos’ soul yearns for him to do, and he’s learned over the few weeks he’s spent recovering in this hospital room, that allowing his soul to reign free over him is the only way to find solace at night.

“But I can go home, can’t I?” he asks the doctor when Lester clears his throat, taking Carlos out of his reverie. “Even if I need help.”

“You’re good to go,” the doctor reassures him. “Your injuries are almost healed, and your legs should heal slowly, but you can rest at home and keep coming back for your weekly check-ups.”

Carlos purses his lips. While he wants to get out of the hospital — _needs to_ , actually — he’s a bit wary about the logistics of his discharge. If what his mother told him is right, he has a boyfriend, and then it’s him who Carlos should be asking to come home and help him; that’s it, if they aren’t already living together. That’s a thought Carlos hasn’t entertained before, and it makes him nervous. He doesn’t know anything about his life between the summer before Police Academy and the night of the assault, and therefore he is unsure about how to navigate existence, both with himself and with others. The only reassuring presence — the only person who hasn’t deceived him _yet_ — is Kapinski.

Who’s already nodding his head in earnest. “I’ll make sure he attends all of them,” he says. 

“Good,” Dr. Martinson acquiesces. “I’ll leave you to sort through the details. I will be back after lunch for a few more checks, and if everything goes according to plan, you might be out of here tomorrow.”

Carlos watches as the doctor leaves the room in a haze. He isn’t ready for that — he isn’t ready for being left in the open with no defenses against himself and the memories he’s lost. Facing the imminent freedom a discharge from hospital means, Carlos is left with a heavy heart and a rising fear of failure. But there’s something more — something that’s nagging at the back of his head.

“Ehm,” he begins, looking up at Kapinski, who’s still standing in the middle of the room. “I think I might be going crazy.”

“I’m sure that’s not possible,” Kapinski jokes. “You were already crazy before this. But why do you say that?”

“Because I—” Carlos trails off slightly, his voice breaking as he tries to gather both his thoughts and his feelings and mash them up into something comprehensible. “I feel like I need to talk to someone.”

“That sounds about right,” Kapinski muses. “Do you want me to go fetch either one of your therapists?”

Carlos shakes his head no. He’s been seeing both a psychiatrist and a psychologist every day since he woke up to a decade lost by amnesia — Lester Martinson had deemed it essential to his recovery, and everyone including Carlos had agreed — and he’s learned to cope and deal with some things. It’s nearly impossible for him to understand and accept everything that’s going in a life he doesn’t remember, but talking to them and sorting out his feelings have helped Carlos to be a bit more comfortable in a body that he didn’t feel his at first — ten years changed some things for which he wasn’t prepared — and a mind that felt way older than the last time he remembers being awake — seventeen-year-old brain trapped in a thirty-year-old body that made him feel like he was living a sort of crossover between _Big_ and _13 Going On 30_ and _17 Again_ , only reversed. He never wanted to grow up faster than he should, and he never wanted to go back to an earlier time in his life. Everything he remembers from before being seventeen was a memory of situations he doesn’t want to relive; he learned from his father’s death and his mother’s leaving and the Blake family taking him in, but he never wanted to go back. He just wanted to move forward at a reasonable pace.

That pace is now so messed up that Carlos doesn’t know where he stands.

But what he knows is that his soul — the part of himself that Kapinski had assured him would always know what to do — is craving words from the last person Carlos would have expected.

“No,” he replies hastily when he realizes he’s got lost in his mind and never actually answered his partner’s question. He’s still bewildered that he gets to be Kapinski’s partner, even if he doesn’t remember. “I don’t need any of them. I’m just, uh. It’s silly.”

“Surely it’s not.” Kapinski moves a chair to drag it closer to the bed and sits by Carlos’ side. “You already know that I don’t think anything anyone feels is silly. It’s _real_.”

“I said _silly_ , not _made up_ ,” Carlos points out. 

Kapinski scoffs. “You know what I mean.” He sighs, clearly uncomfortable. From what Carlos remembers — and he doesn’t think Dan Kapinski has changed _that_ much — Kapinski isn’t a man to talk about feelings. He remembers Kapinski being stoic and strong, and he remembers looking up at him under the rain on a day when everyone had been crying and Kapinski had been just his usual cold-looking self.

The flash hits him viciously and he gasps.

“What’s wrong?” Kapinski asks immediately, shooting up from his chair and hovering over Carlos. “Should I call the doctor?”

“No, not yet,” Carlos says. “But I think I just remembered something.”

“What?”

“The day of Thom’s funeral, did it rain?”

“Yes?” Kapinks replies cautiously. “Did you just remember Thom’s funeral?” When Carlos shrugs, Kapinks chuckles mirthlessly. “Of all the memories to come back to you, _that_ had to be the first. You surely don’t do anything in halves, Reyes.”

Carlos doesn’t reply. He’s too busy feeling aghast at his own mind, playing tricks on him that way, showing him a flash of something so hurtful that it leaves him panting, but refusing to explain to him why he feels such a hurry to be held by arms he doesn’t remember wanting before.

“I guess I just had my first memory back,” Carlos whispers. “It’s a good sign, isn’t it? Maybe everything will come back eventually and I will be able to go back to whatever my life was before that night.”

Kapinski smiles tightly at him. “It’s okay if you’re not ready to come back right after your physical injuries are healed, Carlos. And it’s okay if you have an identity crisis. What you went through was horrendous, and while we caught the culprits and the rest of the system is working on erasing that particular gang off the streets, I wouldn’t blame you if you decided not to come back. I don’t think anyone would.”

“I just don’t know if I can do my job anymore. I don’t even remember getting into the Academy, how am I supposed to be a police officer if I don’t remember ever becoming one? And I don’t care that you’re by my side, because at some point it will be against the world, on my own!” Carlos throws his hands up in the air in despair.

“Are you done being dramatic?” Kapinski interjects when Carlos runs out of breath. “First, your memory will come back eventually, and you have to be patient about it. Second, if this is all about going back home on your own, you know you’re not alone, right? You have a whole support system.”

“But I don’t know if I lived with someone or not! I don’t know if I’m letting someone down!” Carlos pouts and looks down at his lap. From his peripheral vision, he can see Kapinksi pursing his lips in a thin line and taking a deep breath; he focuses on the casts on his legs, which are going to be removed before he can go home. “I don’t want to be alone with someone I don’t remember, and yet...”

“And yet what, Carlos?” Kapinski asks softly. “You won’t be alone, not on my watch anyway. I’d move in with you for the time being if that makes you feel better. But I have the feeling you’re onto something here.”

“You might be right.” Carlos goes silent for a moment. He’s not sure about how to explain what he’s feeling — the _need_ that’s all-consuming, burning inside of him — but he thinks he might as well go for the fall. “Please don’t ask me how I know or why I know or whatever, but I think that while I’m having this personal crisis I might as well be having a breakdown in front of the only other person who’s gone through something similar.”

“And that would be?” There’s a light in Kapinksi’s eyes that Carlos hasn’t seen in a while — probably even before the assault that has changed his life — and he realizes with a start that maybe Thom’s funeral won’t be the only memory he’ll be regaining in a short span of time.

“TK Strand,” Carlos mutters, afraid of making a fool of himself even in front of the only person he doesn’t feel has let him down upon waking up. “And I don’t know why, but I feel like I’ll be safer if I let him into my life once again.”

“Well, you’re surely making a point out of it,” Kapinski jabs at him. “Kicking him out and forbidding him from even entering this room.”

“That hasn’t stopped him anyway,” Carlos blurts out. “I know he sneaks in to spend the night when he thinks I’m asleep.” From the look on Kapinski’s face, Carlos knows he’s hit a nerve. “And I know you knew. I’m pretty sure it’s you who tells him when I’m asleep, so he can get in. And I don’t blame him,” he rushes to say when he sees Kapinski is about to interrupt him. “Mom might have hinted at the fact that we were dating before, you know, I was assaulted in my own home.”

“She shouldn’t have,” Kapinski tells him. “Lester told us in no uncertain terms that—”

“That nobody should tell me anything,” Carlos cuts him off. “And yet you brought Michelle and Theresa here to tell me about Thom and Iris. Didn’t peg you for a hypocrite, Kapinski.” When the older man doesn’t reply, Carlos huffs. “It’s okay. I guess I’m afraid, you know? I think like a thirty-year-old man trapped with memories of a seventeen-year-old boy, and I have no recollection of TK. I just know what he makes me feel whenever I wake up before he does. And what I feel when he’s holding my hand while he’s asleep is too much. I can’t get a hold of it, not yet.”

Kapinski nods, as though he gets it. Carlos thinks no one might ever _get it_ , but at least his partner is trying instead of just pitying him. “And you want me to call him inside today of all days?”

“Why do you say it like that? What’s wrong with today?”

“Well, it’s the first day Strand’s back on shifts,” Kapinski explains with a pained look. “Maybe it’s better if he explains it to you, given that _now_ you want to talk to him, but I’m not sure whether or not he’d want to burden you with that information. It’s been a rough patch for all of us, son, but TK’s felt the hit harder than anyone else.”

Carlos frowns, those words making his insides twist and turn. He would love to know why he feels like he’s dying when he thinks about TK Strand — a man he doesn’t remember _meeting_ — having a hard time or being hurt. But he does, and it’s a feeling he can’t shake off. “Do you think he’ll come tonight?” he asks hopefully, only to be turned down by Kapinski’s pained expression.

“Last I was told, he’s pulling a twenty-four-hour shift today. I don’t think he’ll be around the hospital at all. But,” Kapinski adds as an afterthought, the wheels in his mind clearly turning. “I think it’d be better if you two just talked in a neutral place. Outside of the hospital.”

“I don’t think there’s anywhere _neutral_ where I get to talk to the boyfriend I don’t remember dating,” Carlos points out.

“A hospital isn’t the right place to have whatever conversation you’re going to have,” Kapinski says in a final tone. “Do you trust me?”

Carlos finds himself replying in a heartbeat, “I do, Kapinski, you know that. With my life.”

“Then leave it up to me. I’ll make sure you two have that talk. Now, you should rest a bit. I’ll go chase the nurses and the doctors so you can be discharged tomorrow, no delays.”

Carlos watches him as Kapinski stands up and squeezes his arm as a way of saying goodbye before storming out of the room. He’s left with the inkling that maybe he shouldn’t have agreed so quickly to whatever Kapinski has in mind.

It’s with a start that he realizes two things.

First, he never _actually_ agreed to do whatever Kapinski has plotted.

And second.

Second, he doesn’t mind so long as he gets to see TK Strand. Which is, to be honest with himself, a shock he wasn’t expecting but a sweet perspective.

* * *

The crutches keep getting caught up in every single corner of the apartment. It’s been like that for the whole week and a half that Carlos has been back home, after being discharged from the hospital. So far he’s attended two different check-ups with Lester Martinson, and apparently, his injuries are healing just fine — his legs should be completely functional in a little under a month, from what he’s been told. The cuts and the bruises in his face haven’t left as many deep scars as everyone had been fearing, but Carlos knows that it’s the inner wounds that are the worst.

The pain of not knowing anything about his life — or worse, knowing that there’s a void he can’t fill except with the bits and pieces his mind supplies from time to time, all flashes of different moments that don’t fit together, like puzzle pieces that are missing — that pain is worse.

“Ouch,” he cries out when his left crutch gets stuck on the edge of the coffee table. He isn’t supposed to be up and walking on his own, not even in his own home, but Kapinski has gone grocery shopping and heʼs all alone. He wanted to try to move, push his own limits. 

He collides against the desk that takes most of the far corner of the living room, and before he can even complain about the pain shooting up his leg, his vision is blurred and heʼs transported back to what heʼs now learned to recognize as a memory.

> The living room is silent except for their ragged breathing, as the air around them grows thicker by the second. 
> 
> “Answer me, Carlos,” TK splutters. Carlos holds back a sigh. “If you were really talking to your sister, why wouldn’t you tell me?”
> 
> “Iʼm telling you now, Tyler,” he replies calmly. If heʼs learned anything about TK Strand in these years, is that he needs to remain calm or else he risks spooking TK more. “Why are you so worked up about it? I was just finishing dinner. Let's go eat.”
> 
> “And now you're deflecting,” TK scoffs. “You just want to confuse me so I forget about this. What are you hiding from me, Carlos? Why are you lying to me?”
> 
> Carlos doesn’t really understand how things escalate so quickly after that, but at one point heʼs talking to his sister on the phone about forever with his boyfriend and the next heʼs watching agape as TK spits out all the venom he holds inside. 
> 
> “You keep avoiding the issue,” TK accuses Carlos, completely worked up. “You’re lying to me. You're lying to everyone! I—I can't be here. I can't look at you. Here. I don't think I can have these. Take them back.”
> 
> TK offers him his copy of the keys and turns around, ready to stomp his way out for Carlosʼ apartment — and Carlosʼ life — tonight. TK grabs the doorknob and all Carlos can think is that his already battered door can't take another bump. He looks down at himself, still barefoot, and makes a decision. 
> 
> He runs after TK. 
> 
> “I just wanted to have a lifetime with you! I was going to promise you forever tonight!” he bellows in TKʼs wake. His boyfriend stops, back still turned to him, and Carlos takes his unmoving form as a sign to keep talking. “I even have a ring, TK. I was talking to my sister because I wanted to share this with her. I know you two would be best friends in no time. And I know your thoughts on marriage, so I wasn't going to pressure you. This is just a promise of forever.”
> 
> TK shrugs, shaking as he asks over his shoulder, “Why would you want forever with someone like me?” 
> 
> He runs into the night, Carlos helplessly calling after him. He kicks the door with his bare hands before getting inside once again and cursing the door that, after the most recent mistreatment, is now impossible to lock.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he hears from the door. He’s been so engrossed in trying to get unstuck that heʼs missed the sound of the front door being unlocked. “You’re not supposed to stroll around your condo.”

“I am _fine_ ,” he almost screeches, turning around so fast that he feels dizzy. He is met with Kapinskiʼs glare. 

“Sure you are,” Kapinski scoffs, leaving the paper bags on top of the counter. “I thought we had an agreement. You behaved and I didn't have to call your mother or Theresa to babysit you whenever I had to go out. I don't see any commitment on your part, Reyes.” 

Carlos flops down on the couch once again. “I don’t like feeling helpless.” 

“You aren't helpless, Carlos. You just need help. There’s a difference.” 

Carlos doesn’t have to tell Kapinski that heʼs trapped between the four walls of the rooms in his condo — Kapinski already knows. Heʼs tried everything to keep Carlos busy, but there’s nothing Kapinski can do against boredom and the rising feeling of not knowing who he is. The extra time to reflect on his existence isn’t helping matters. 

But he still isn’t about to let his mother or Theresa in his house any time soon, if the last time is any indication of how things would go between them — Kapinski had gone out for a shift, and heʼd called Theresa but Carlosʼ mother had also shown up, and they both had started a fight about who made the best pancakes. Which, of course, should be the one who had been cooking for years instead of the one who's spent years in between wars. 

Carlos hasn’t forgiven either Michelle or Theresa, but he’s still in the first stages of a grieving phase — for what seems the second time in this life for the same people. He hasn’t gone to visit Thom’s tomb either, and following Kapinski’s advice — undoubtedly biased by Michelle’s view on things — he hasn’t tried to contact Iris despite knowing exactly where she is.

And on top of all that, the memories he keeps getting paint him a past where, apparently, he didn’t get much of a respite. Everything he’s remembered so far has either revolved around his job, which is good since he hopes to come back to it once he’s completely given a green light, or around how much of a failure his alleged relationship with TK Strand was. Carlos doesn’t remember good moments, just flashes of red and black whenever he thinks about TK.

“Are you up for an excursion? Nothing too strenuous,” Kapinski adds when Carlos looks at him in disbelief. 

“Are you letting me out? Where are we going?” Carlos perks up at the mere thought of going out. He’s been holed up in his condo for eleven days, and while he's had visitors over, nobody has managed to lift his spirits. 

He’s surprised himself wishing TK Strand would be the one walking through his threshold several times, but despite Kapinskiʼs words about him making sure the two of them could meet up, it hasn't happened yet. Carlos suspects that heʼs shooed TK away with his reaction the first day — heʼs ashamed of kicking TK out, and heʼs ashamed of allowing him back in under the guise of ignorance. Carlos should have talked to him, but he's found out heʼs too much of a coward. 

Maybe going out will help him clear his mind. 

“I need to go to the precinct to pick up some things,” Kapinski explains bashfully. “The guys keep asking about you. Camilla is running a bet about when you'll be back.”

Carlos laughs. He knows who Camilla is because Kapinski had told him about her — witty and petite, Camilla Beckenridge is as scary as Marjan Marwani. 

He chokes on his own laughter. “Whoʼs Marjan Marwani?” he asks as out of the blue as the image of a woman in a scarf assaults him. 

Kapinski shakes his head. “Another memory?” Carlos nods and Kapinski continues, “Marjan is a firefighter at the 126. You guys used to be friends. But she hasn't been around much ever since that night.” 

Carlos doesn’t need Kapinski to voice his feelings — the disappointed tone of his voice is enough to make him feel small and wrong for how heʼs treated the people he didn’t remember. “I wish I knew how to fix this, but until I remember who I was I don’t think I can do much more.”

“There’s always more to be done,” Kapinski chides him. “But it’s your recovery. I promised I wouldn’t say anything.”

And so far, Kapinski has made good on that promise. He hasn’t told him any detail on his past life unless Carlos has asked first. In fact, Kapinski taking him to the precinct contradicts a bit the motto with which he’s been living lately — live and let live.

“Go change into something suitable to go out,” Kapinski instructs him. “I’ll be organizing the groceries meanwhile.”

Carlos limps his way into his bedroom, the big king-sized bed mocking him in his immensity. The time he spends on his own has been growing as his injuries healed, but this is the first day Kapinski lets him alone inside of his room, with the exception of him tucking Carlos in for the night. There’s a running joke between them that Kapinski would sleep in the same bed if Carlos didn't writhe so much. 

Carlos sits on his bed, exhausted from the exertion, and wonders if there will ever be a moment when he wonʼt be dead on his feet from just walking a few steps into his own house, which is allegedly small. His mind runs through the myriad of shirts and Henleys he has hanging inside of his closet — Kapinski showed him on the first day back home, and Carlos has memorized it just in case he couldn’t stand on his feet long enough to choose his clothes. It still amazes Carlos, how heʼs able to forget half his life after a bad blow to the head — and a few broken bones and traumatisms — but his ability to learn new things remains intact. Dr. Martinson is hopeful that his memories will end up unraveling in his mind, given that there's nothing preventing them from coming back. 

Carlos isn’t so sure that he wants them back anymore. 

As he sits on his bed, mentally selecting a bottle-green polo and dark jeans — knowing he will need to get on his crutches and fetch those two articles of clothing, and then some socks as well — Carlos reminisces of the fragments of memories that have been weaving their way into his brain ever since he was discharged from hospital. 

Kapinski had sworn that he didn’t live with anyone, and Carlos had believed him. There weren’t any items that he didn’t recognize as something he would own, given that he really didn’t remember purchasing any of them, but Carlos has been able to _feel_ the shadow of a presence looming over him throughout the whole apartment. There’s a reverence in certain places that Carlos has the inkling that's got a lot to do with the boyfriend who is currently burying himself in long shifts and probably alcohol as Carlos simply awaits for his life to jumpstart again. 

With a sigh, he stands up again, favoring his left leg as he walks with short steps to the closet and opens the door. He finds the polo heʼs looking for easily, but the jeans are stuck between a hanger out of place and something bigger on the floor of the closet. Planting firmly his crutch on the ground, Carlos leans in to free the trapped pants out of their impromptu cage when he notices that there’s a box on the floor, lid half open from his tugging at the jeans. He frowns. Kapinski hasn't said anything about a box, and it's the first time Carlos sees it since coming back. Curiosity piqued, he drags it out with one of his crutches and manages to get it next to the bed. He sits down again, his knees protesting the effort, and his hand shoots to open the lid fully. Inside, he can see a stack of things topped by a light yellow fabric. Carlos reaches out, one finger caressing the fabric before he makes up his mind and he takes it out of the box. Underneath, he can see a pair of destroyed sneakers, his letter jacket and an APD t-shirt, among other things that he can believe are his. He focuses on the article in his hands, fingers holding it as though it were a precious treasure.

Maybe it is.

It’s a hoodie — soft and well-worn, cuffed with strings that seem chewed in — that Carlos doesn’t think is his. Not because he doesn’t remember purchasing it, because these days he doesn’t remember much, but because it doesn’t fit with the aesthetic he’s spied among his dressing style. Brows furrowing in confusion, he lifts the hoodie to his nose, inhaling deeply as though the scent could help him understand what a hoodie that isn’t his is doing in a box inside his closet.

> He’s finishing the last touches on a salad over the counter of his open kitchen when the doorbell rings. He thinks it must be TK, despite the hour — he’s invited him after both their shifts, and he knows the firefighters have had a _long_ day. He saunters over the front door, fixing his light blue shirt, and upon opening he’s attacked by a blur of yellow and hands, roaming over his body and ripping off buttons that Carlos knows he will have to hunt down from underneath his furniture for _days_.
> 
> “Ah, it’s like that, huh?” he muses under his breath, catching up as lips trace the column of his neck. TK’s pliant under his fingers, practically melting as Carlos touches him.
> 
> “You don’t like it a little rough?” TK smirks up at him as he tries to take his shirt off, but Carlos is having none of it.
> 
> He doesn’t know where it goes awry, if it’s when he tells TK to take a breath and calls him _tiger_ or when he makes the snide remark about the red snapper, but all of a sudden he’s staring at wide green eyes that seem panicked.
> 
> “I thought that we were clear about everything,” TK’s saying. Carlos has to blink and double-take what’s happening because he’s starting to get confused as hell. “I’m not looking for—for this.”
> 
> “I’m sorry, but I don’t do this a lot. Clearly,” Carlos attempts to joke, but it falls on deaf ears. “I don’t think it’s a big ask to have an actual conversation before we hook up.”
> 
> “Well,” TK says, shaking his head. “It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?” When Carlos doesn’t reply, TK continues, like a tap that, once opened, can no longer be turned off. “Look, I just got out of a relationship. I’m not looking to jump into another—”
> 
> “It’s a meal,” Carlos finally pipes in, his voice laced with an almost laugh that he feels might make this whole conversation a bit lighter. “Not a marriage proposal, TK.”
> 
> And it’s then — right at that moment — that Carlos realizes he’s blown all of his chances at _anything_ with TK. He watches as the firefighter chews on the strings of his yellow hoodie — the soft fabric frayed under TK’s teeth — and Carlos knows something’s changed. The air around them shifts, and somehow he doesn’t register the words being spoken, only that TK is fighting to keep his composure and that Carlos himself is about to lose his.
> 
> “Why are you being so crazy?” he manages to ask. He’s confused as to how they’ve gone from almost hooking up against his wall to failing at having dinner to a couple of arguments when they’re not even a _couple_. That much is clear now, with the way TK is acting.
> 
> It doesn’t matter that Carlos would have wanted them to get to know each other better — it doesn’t matter that Carlos would have wanted them to take a different route.
> 
> TK is already standing up, pain painted in his features as he mumbles, “I’m sorry for the misunderstanding.” And then he’s gone, door slamming behind him.
> 
> Carlos stares at the void in front of him, dinner completely forgotten, as he tries to understand what has happened, a weight settling around his heart and squeezing at it as he thinks that he has just ruined his last chance with TK Strand.

He’s thrown on his back on the bed by the force of his own memories — triggered by an article of clothing that isn’t even featured in this image — unaware that he’s crying until the wetness reaches his neck and soaks it up. It isn’t the first time he’s been hit with a memory, but it’s the first time he’s seen TK in one of them. Before he’s only remembered flashes of red against the blackness of his own mind — bits and pieces of a life he hadn’t thought he’d ever regain, memories with Theresa and Michelle, one glorious night at the honky-tonk getting drunk, his first arrest — but this time the emotions laced within the images speak volumes.

Somehow, in a past he doesn’t remember, in a time he doesn’t know how to recount, Carlos Reyes hurt TK Strand. And for someone who’s adamant in his quest to find himself once again without the constraints of what he doesn’t know, Carlos is sure as hell way too affected by the exchange of petty words he’s just remembered.

“Hey, Reyes, you okay in there?” comes Kapinski’s voice through the door Carlos closed upon getting inside his room. “Need a hand?”

“No,” he chokes out, voice strained by tears and heavy with guilt. “I’m slower than usual, but I’ll be out soon.”

“Okay,” Kapinski replies. Carlos hears footsteps walking away, and for once he’s grateful for Kapinski’s sense of privacy.

Unable to hold his tears back — not even attempting to do so — Carlos takes off the comfy clothes he wears home and pulls the polo over his head, fights the jeans to fit and gets on his feet again, crutches in place. He wipes at his face angrily and limps back outside.

“I’m ready!” he bellows, hoping that there aren’t any tear streaks marked on his cheeks.

Kapinski comes over to the hallway, takes a long look at him. If he sees anything out of the ordinary, he mentions none of it. Instead, he reaches out and straightens Carlos’ collar with a softness Carlos hasn’t seen in his partner in years. 

“Let’s go. I bet the guys are anxious to get to see you again.” He walks Carlos to the door slowly. “They didn’t visit much while you were at the hospital because he didn’t want to intrude.”

Carlos hums noncommittally, suddenly not at all willing to go through the trouble of driving to the precinct and meet with people he hardly remembers. He sinks into the passenger’s seat of Kapinski’s Toyota Sequoia; he rests his forehead against the window once Kapinski’s closed the door, and with a sigh he closes his eyes for the whole duration of the ride to the precinct where he used to work.

* * *

The visit to the precinct is going as smoothly as Carlos would have expected. His memories are spiked by the closeness to familiar places, and he finds himself remembering a few details about his life as a police officer. It's not much, but it gives him hope. 

One of the disadvantages of being on medical leave due to broken bones and battered flesh is that he tires easily. Way too soon for his liking, Carlos is asking for a seat and a respite. Kapinski, who's been his guide for the whole visit, drops him at his desk and tells him in no uncertain terms that Carlos is not to move until Kapinski is done speaking with their Chief. 

Carlos lasts three minutes before feeling like he could die of boredom, fingers tapping on the table while he waits. The surface remains exactly how he left it — or so Camilla had told him — and he can see a few stacks of papers scattered throughout the table, and a photo frame that catches his eye. Carlos picks it up, inspecting it closely. 

It depicts Carlos, somewhat younger and starry eyes, with his arms around a green-eyed man who's been plaguing his dreams lately. TK Strand is looking right at Carlos in the photo, wide smile and even wider eyes. They seem in love. 

“I still remember the first day we met TK,” Camilla says from the door. “He was in such a rough shape, after that bar brawl he started.”

Carlosʼ eyebrows shoot up high in his forehead as he looks back at the photo in his hands, his index finger tracing the silhouettes.

> Carlos has been minding his own business in one of the busiest nights of the week — bar brawls are a constant in a town infested by honky-tonks — when Camilla drops a file and a plastic bag on top of his already hogged desk. 
> 
> “What the heck, Camilla?” he complains, glaring at her. “I’ve only got one hour to go!”
> 
> “Thought you might want in, just this once,” Camilla says mischievously. “Just check the file. You’ll thank me.”
> 
> Carlos kicks back the urge to throw the file back at her as she retreats to her own desk, three rows far from his. Instead, he opens the file; his breath catches in his throat and his eyes widen.
> 
> _Tyler Kennedy Strand_.
> 
> He’s so not ready for this.
> 
> Carlos is still mad at TK for bailing out on him the other night, and he’d be lying if he said his pride isn’t hurt about it. He’s not usually one to do the chasing, and it’s proved to be because he’s not smooth about it. He comes on too strong, and it scares people away. That’s what’s happened with TK, or Tyler Kennedy, if his file isn’t lying to him.
> 
> He peruses through the statements and the report of the officer who’s made the detentions. Carlos bites his lips and balls his hands into fists as he reads about how TK seemingly provoked the bar brawl that has ended with him arrested in Carlos’ precinct. 
> 
> “Oh, God,” he mutters under his breath. “Give me patience.”
> 
> TK is sitting at another desk when Carlos arrives, ice pack pressed against the left side of his face, eyes lowered and shoulders slumped. Carlos isn’t sure what’s happened, but he feels his protective instincts kicking in — maybe it will always be like this when it comes to TK Strand. He remembers the facts stated in the report — a full 0.0 alcohol test is not something a police officer usually sees in a bar brawl. Drunken people throwing fist first and asking questions later is one thing, but Carlos is faced with someone who’s started a fight with a clear head.
> 
> That leaves Carlos with more questions than answers, and he bites his tongue before he says something inappropriate. Which, by the way, lasts for about ten seconds — TK can get under his skin and make him say the stupidest things.
> 
> “I’m not trying to be your boyfriend, or even your friend, if you're not into it,” Carlos states, his words cutting right through him as he speaks them. “But you should talk to someone about why you felt compelled to do something so suicidal.”
> 
> TK has the decency of not retaliating, not for a while at least, until the tension between them grows so thick that he could slice it with a knife. Carlos fakes interest in the files he’s got open in front of him, when all he would love to do is hug TK and never let go. There’s something breakable underneath the cockiness he usually sports.
> 
> “I’m sorry I went crazy on you the other night,” TK whispers.
> 
> “I’m a cop. I'm used to crazy,” Carlos says, not missing a bit, still looking at his papers.
> 
> “Look, I just went through a really bad break-up. Like, nuclear bad, and then I relapsed.”
> 
> Carlos wants to tell TK that he doesn’t need any explanation — they aren’t _anything_ after all, as much as Carlos would love to be more than acquaintances — but instead his curiosity gets the best out of him and he says, “You mean with me?”
> 
> There’s a fine line between wanting to know and having the confirmation that he’s, in fact, part of the reason why TK’s stressing out. Carlos isn’t so sure he wants to cross it.
> 
> “No,” TK says softly. “I mean with substances.”
> 
> And that’s when Carlos’ world crumbles — as he watches TK’s blotched face, the bloodstains on the collar of his t-shirt, the bruises and the cuts — because he understands exactly where he overstepped, and his mind supplies the rest of the image he’s been lacking.
> 
> A bad break-up — and Carlos made a snide comment about marriage proposals. Relapsing — and Carlos offered TK a glass of champagne.
> 
> He’s been a total ass.

“Carlos, are you alright? You kinda spaced out on us right now,” Kapinski is saying, nudging at him. Carlos looks up at him with shaky hands and a heavy heart, visibly shattered as he tries to regain his composure while he shivers. “What’s wrong?”

“I think,” Carlos stammers. “I think I need to go back home. I—I might have remembered something, but I can't be sure.” 

Kapinski steals a not-so-subtle glance at the picture in his hand. He doesn’t say a thing, though; Kapinski simply helps him up and wordlessly offers him his own crutches, almost forgotten against the wall. 

“Weʼre leaving,” Kapinski announces, one hand on Carlosʼ back as they slowly make their way through the precinct. The officers Carlos has yet to remember bid their farewells, but the words don’t sink. “Here, son, weʼre almost there. Just a few more steps and you'll be fine. I promise, son.”

Carlos barely notices Kapinski navigating through the precinct and reaching the parking lot, not to mention that he doesn’t even realize they’re sitting inside the car until a while later when his mind registers the trees passing by as the vehicle moves. 

“How are you feeling?” Kapinski asks when he stops the car at a red light. Carlos doesn’t know how to reply — there’s too much turmoil agitating him from the inside. “It’s okay if this was too much, Carlos. I understand. Everyone does. Why don’t you relax for a bit? We will be back home in a few.”

Carlos sighs, looking outside the window aimlessly until his eyes halt their roaming on a tea place with a few chairs and tables outside. There’s something familiar in it, an air of déjà-vu that has him shivering before his mind plunges back into another memory.

> TK is seated across him, sipping nervously from a plastic cup that Carlos thinks faintly remembers to snot. Carlos can recognize a deflecting technique when he sees — or rather hears — one, so heʼs ready to call TKʼs bullshit put. 
> 
> And he does. Only, it backfires on him. 
> 
> “When I saw you in that hospital bed, not knowing if you’d ever wake up again, I had all these feelings... Strong feelings, which is crazy because I still barely know you. I’m just confused. What are we? Are we even a _we_?” 
> 
> He had been expecting some more confessions of a past turned awry, something he can work on. What Carlos hadn't anticipated is the words that leave TKʼs mouth after a few minutes of back and forth that seem effortless. Even when they argue, they're so in sync that Carlos could cry. 
> 
> “Honestly, I have no idea, Carlos.” 
> 
> He feels his heart constricting in his chest, so tight it's becoming very hard to just breathe. “ _I have no idea_. Yeah. That’s it.” 
> 
> TK plunges into what sounds like a jabbering rant about how confused he is, and it leaves Carlos longing for reaching out and taking him in his arms. All he wants to do is comfort TK the way he knows TK has never been comforted. 
> 
> “You sound pretty reasonable, actually.” Carlos motion for the bartender to bring him the card reader and wins over TK about who's paying. After all, Carlos isn’t sure whether TK would have a job to come back to if he figures out who he is. “If it’s not meant to be, it’s not meant to be,” he says, feigning a cheerfulness he doesn’t feel. “Nor like it’s the end of the world.”
> 
> And then, just _then_ , the world ends.

The memory vanishes in thin air and he’s once again back in Kapinskiʼs car, forehead pressed against the window in what is now his favorite spot, but this time he doesn’t even have time to feign being strong. A loud sob wrecks out of him, cutting through his throat and reverberating inside the vehicle.

He wants to remember, but this is a price too high to pay — reliving the past where he got hurt, where he hurt other people, only for it to go up in flames and devour him like Chronos eating up his children. If this is what it takes, he doesn’t want it. He can live without seeing TKʼs face contorted in pain every single time he closes his eyes. 

Only he evidently canʼt. 

Carlos has been avoiding the subject of TK Strand for the longest time. He hasnʼt wanted to address the issue for fear of finding out that whatever they had was a palace made out of poker cards; heʼs been stalling, debating on the pros and cons of talking to the firefighter, until now. Now he knows what he needs to do — go find TK and promise him the whole world — but he canʼt stop shaking. 

What can he offer to TK Strand now, when he doesn’t even know who he is? Why does he have the feeling that they fought tooth and nail for a love that isn’t going to pass the test of time? 

Carlos isn’t the man TK thinks he is. That man is buried six feet under, wrapped in a shroud made of fear and forgetfulness. 

Kapinski pulls up to Carlosʼ condo. In the driveway there’s another car, a pick-up Ford that Carlos could never forget. 

“What’s Amalia doing here?” he demands. 

“I know just about the same as you do, Reyes.” 

Carlos wishes he could jump out of the car and run into his own home, but his injuries have yet to heal properly. Instead, he limps his way slowly, one crutch after the other, until he reaches the door. Kapinski is hot on his heels, keys dangling from his fingers. The door is unlocked, which Carlos had expected — he might not remember shit, but he knows that in any iteration of his life he would give his older sister a key to his house. 

“Amalia?” he calls out when Kapinski pushes the door open. “Amalia, are you here?” 

“So much for a surprise visit after Mom cleared me to leave Parris Island!” comes the reply from somewhere behind his fridge door. His sister peeks out, munching on one carrot. “I would have expected better groceries from you, Kapinski. You're losing your touch.” 

Carlos stares at his sister, at the familiar yet different shape of her face, at the endless love oozing from her words. His heart is filled with a myriad of feelings, clashing together and creating a fireworks show inside his soul that could rival the Fourth of July. 

“Amalia,” he chokes on the name now that he has his sister in front of him. 

“Shhh, hermanito,” Amalia whispers, arms open in a clear invitation. “Iʼm here to take care of you, as long as it takes. You'll be fine.” 

Carlos has heard those words so many times that they have lost all their meaning, but hearing them in Amaliaʼs voice turns them into somewhat _real_. 

“Amalia,” he whispers on repeat, like a broken record in a quest to fix itself. 

The unbearable weight of the memories heʼs unlocked today becomes too much — the visit to the precinct and the existential crisis that follows because he doesn’t know if he will be able to do his job once heʼs given the green light to come back, the memories of TK pouring out his heart, the voice nagging at him with fragments of an argument that he canʼt be sure even took place. 

Carlos can't help but wonder if the relationship his mother had implied — an apparently healthy boyfriendship with TK — is nothing but a figment of his imagination, given that the only memories heʼs been able to recover revolve around tragedies and fights and grief. 

His sister inserting herself into his life once again is the only thing that doesn’t feel out of place right now. 

“Here,” Amalia says, stepping forward and hugging him loosely. “You’re safe now.” 

Overwhelmed, he falls into his sister's arms, and cries until the tears lull him to sleep.

* * *

Carlos is lazily lounging on the couch, surfing through his Netflix app, when the door opens and Kapinski startles him by stepping inside when he should be patrolling the streets. 

He’s been trying to lie low, wiping his tears whenever they freshly come to his eyes as he keeps welcoming memories from his seemingly unbidden mind. Ever since he followed Kapinski to the precinct, it feels like the memories won't stop coming. The good and the bad intertwine in swirls of color in his mind, all dancing around the image of a pair of green eyes that haunt his dreams. 

“I’m here to pick you up,” Kapinski says nonchalantly, as though it’s normal for him to show up unannounced at the brink of dusk on a Saturday when he should be on shift. Carlos has been spending his days with his sister while she’s staying in town — her leave extended with no questions asked when Lieutenant General Alicia Reyes had signed off the recommendation letter required for that purpose — and therefore he hasn’t expected Kapinski to visit, not when he was supposed to be in the middle of a twenty-four-hour shift. “C’mon, Reyes, you’re staring.”

“Of course I’m staring,” Carlos retaliates with a frown. His eyes wander to the police cruiser that’s parked askew on his driveway, the blue lights still on. “Do you really think I’m going to go anyway with you while you’re on shift?”

“This is my break for dinner,” Kapinski explains, an exasperated tinge to his voice. “And you’re making me waste it all with your hesitation. Go put some decent clothes on, slip into your nicest sneakers, and come _on_!”

“Why don’t you, Carlos?” Amalia says, materializing behind him and startling him. “It will do you some good to be out. It’s a nice night. Maybe you could even see some stars, if you’re lucky.”

“Why do I feel like this is some well-staged prank on me?” he cries out as his sister pushes him to his room to change out of his sweats and into something more fitting to go out. 

He’s been doing better these past weeks, and he only needs the crutch from time to time, when his left knee is too tired to function properly. Everyone’s been astonished at his fast recovery; even Lester Martinson has praised him. However, his memories keep coming back slowly and spaced far in between, somehow lacking the traction that his body has picked up on. He picks up a maroon Henley and a pair of jeans that he suspects Amalia has laid out on the bed for him. He purposefully doesn’t open the door to his closet, fully knowing that the box with the hoodie that brought him so many dark memories is waiting there for him.

Carlos doesn’t feel strong enough to face it anytime soon.

The mere idea of having hurt someone like TK, now that he has gotten a glimpse into the depth of his own feelings for a man he wishes he would have never forgotten, turns his insides up and revolts him. But just as he’s needed time to heal and come to terms with the fact that maybe he will never get back what he’s lost, Carlos knows he should give TK time to understand where he stands now — he should give TK the space to accept that whatever they had is long lost and dead and buried, before Carlos hurts him further while he sorts out his own feelings about the whole situation.

After the meltdown at the precinct, followed by another breakdown when Kapinski was driving him by a tea place on Main Street, from some weeks ago, Carlos has been avoiding thinking about what all that meant. Kapinski just told him to take it step by step, one minute at a time, but Carlos feels like he’s stalling. And he knows it’s all his fear at being hurt once again — his fear of hurting someone else in this process of finding himself. His memory is slowly but surely coming back to him, although everything revolving around TK outright refuses to rise from the darkness it’s buried within.

It doesn’t help matters that TK is also avoiding him like a plague. Not that Carlos blames him — after all the situation is weird enough without them meeting up — but a part of him wishes they’d have already talked at some point by now. He feels incomplete as it is, without the whole of his memories; he doesn’t need to feel as though half his soul has been ripped off him.

“Better now?” he says as he walks out of his room with his arms wide open, forcing his feelings back down his throat and into the depth of his inner turmoil. 

Amalia laughs happily. “Look at you, all dressed up and dandy for your date with Kapinski!”

“I wasn’t aware this was a date,” Kapinski deadpans. “I would have chosen a different uniform for tonight.”

“Well, it’s you who’s kidnapping me, Kapinski,” Carlos jokes as he grabs his jacket and pulls it over his shoulders, crutch firmly in hand. “You tell me if this is a date or not. Although, let me tell you something. I’m not putting out on first dates.”

“Good thing this isn’t a first date then,” Kapinski jokes back, helping Carlos out of his condo and down the three steps on his front door. “C’mon, tonight’s a clear night for stargazing. I just know the perfect spot.”

Carlos nods as he follows Kapinski into his SUV, the sky above them clear of clouds but not yet as starry as Carlos would think a sky should be for stargazing. He has yet to discern why this sudden urge to go watch the stars while Kapinski is on shift but for now he just enjoys the ride, head resting against the window as he stares outside. The stars greet him as they get further and further away from downtown Austin and into the wilderness around the city. 

Kapinski pulls up next to a completely empty field, devoid of vegetation save for a few trees here and there. Carlos sits up, a grimace already forming on his lips. “Where are we?” he demands. By now he knows that Kapinski would never hurt him intentionally, but there’s something nagging at the back of his head, a voice telling him to jump out of the car and start running in the opposite direction. 

He’s scared. 

“This is a field,” Kapinski says unhelpfully. Carlos resists the urge to roll his eyes — maybe he does that, a little.

“I can see that, Captain Obvious,” Carlos jabs at him. “Since when is this the best place to—” 

He trails off when he sees a familiar sight in the middle of the field — a blue Camaro coupé idling a few feet away from where Kapinski has stopped his own Toyota. Carlos has always dreamed of owning one Chevrolet Camaro just like this one, vibrant blue under the night skies, the kind of freedom he’s always yearned for. Somehow, he feels like this car is linked to him — that he’s being called. When he checks the spot where the Camaro is parked, he understands everything.

TK Strand is standing next to the Camaro, wearing a soft grey hoodie and a nervous smile on his face. Carlos can see the way his hands are shaking despite TK’s efforts of hiding them in his pockets.

“Dan?” Carlos says, turning Kapinski’s given name into a question, his voice high-pitching by the end of it. “What is going on here?”

“Listen, son,” Kapinski begins. He’s already killed the engine, and he’s turned towards Carlos. There’s a new gleam in his eyes — Carlos thinks it might be tears, once again. He’s seen Kapinski crying or on the verge of doing so more times in the weeks he’s been recovering from his injuries than during the rest of the life he remembers. “I know this is hard, and I know you’ve been having doubts and questioning everything.”

“But why now? He’s been avoiding me, not that I blame him, after everything, but I—I don’t know.”

“Amalia and I have thought that it would be beneficial to you both, to meet and talk somewhere that could help you remember. Owen believes it will be good for TK to get out of his head, as well. Poor boy has been driving himself crazy.”

“TK’s like a very excitable puppy,” Carlos states. “It pains me to be the source of his own pain.” He’s about to keep talking when he realizes two things at once — first, that Kapinski is staring at him with a weird look in his eye. 

The second is that he’s inadvertently remembered something about a person he could have sworn he’s never met before.

“Did you just—” Kapinski gestures between them.

“I—I think so, Dan,” Carlos mumbles. “I don’t know what to do. It’s just—Dan, this isn’t a neutral place, right?”

Kapinski shakes his head. “It isn’t. Listen, we can go back. If you feel uncomfortable, just say the word and I’ll turn around. TK will understand that you need more time.”

“But how am I supposed to talk to him after everything that’s happened?” Carlos says. “I kicked him out, then I let him spend the nights thinking I didn’t know. Then he’s kept his distance with me because TK is—he is—he’s been respecting me and the space I needed. At least, that’s what Mom says.”

“I usually would take everything your mother says with a grain of salt, but I have to admit she might be onto something, Carlos.” Kapinski laughs wetly. “Is this all you have against this meeting, Carlos? That you don’t know how to talk to him?”

Carlos nods.

“TK’s here, right? He knew you were coming, and yet he came. I’d say he wants to talk to you.”

“But what if I’m not who he thinks I am?” Carlos throws his hands in the air. He doesn’t know what he must look like, bewildered inside of the car. “I don’t want to deceive him.”

“I doubt TK Strand would ever be deceived by you, Carlos. But that’s something you should test out for yourself.”

“That Camaro—” Carlos scoffs. “Is that Camaro his? Is that how we met?”

Kapinski has the audacity to _laugh_ at him. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” 

“Yeah, I very much would!”

“Then, get off my car and go find out for yourself!”

Carlos purses his lips before reaching out for the door handle. “If this goes south, can I call you?”

“You can always call me,” Kapinski reassures him. “This goes south or north, good or bad, you can always count on me.”

“See you at home, then,” Carlos says, stepping out of the car. He dusts off his jeans as Kapinski drives away, leaving him alone with TK and a blue Camaro coupé in a field that Carlos wants desperately to remember.

He takes a few steps towards TK, who’s now shuffling nervously on his feet. “Hey,” he begins, biting down on his lip. 

“Hey yourself,” TK replies, looking briefly up at him. Then, he comes back to looking at the ground, his sneakers kicking at the mud. “I didn’t think you’d stay, once you saw it was me here.”

“I’m sorry,” Carlos finds himself apologizing. He stops himself before he can reach out and touch TK’s arm in what he hopes could be a soothing way — he isn’t sure how TK will react to that. He also doesn’t know how _he_ will react to it. “I shouldn’t have treated you like that back at the hospital.”

“Don’t apologize,” TK says hotly. “You didn’t ask to be assaulted in your own home. If anything, it should be me apologizing.”

“What for?”

TK sighs. “How much has Kapinski told you? About us?”

“Not much,” Carlos confesses. “They’ve been keeping most of the things I don’t remember under wraps because—”

“—Lester has told them to,” TK finishes for him. Carlos blinks surprised; he wouldn’t have expected TK to complete his sentences. He wouldn’t have expected anyone to have such an intimate connection to his psyche.

And yet here they are.

“It’s okay, Carlos,” TK says. “When Dad came and told me I should try to reach out to you, after having buried myself in work to try and appease this—this—whatever this is,” TK huffs out. “I thought he was crazy. But then I learned there would be shooting stars tonight, and since this is a special spot I thought—”

“What did you think?” Carlos whispers, taking a step closer to TK when the green-eyed man trails off and remains silent, clearly lost in his own thoughts. “What are you thinking, TK?”

And then, just like that, a wave of something he can’t explain hits him when TK looks up at him with those big eyes as though he can read Carlos’ soul.

> “I’m thinking — we make a pretty good team.” TK’s voice is a whisper against his skin, hot and safe in a way Carlos hasn’t felt in _eons_.
> 
> Carlos looks to his side, sprawled both of them on top of the Camaro, the hood cold beneath their backs. He allows a small smile to bloom on his face. “We really do, don’t we?” he retaliates.
> 
> TK reaches out and grabs Carlos’ hands. “Afraid so.”
> 
> He takes both their hands into his hoodie’s pocket, safely tucked in the warmth of a love that’s learning to blossom, and that’s all Carlos can feel.

Carlos stares at TK in awe after the revelation that heʼs just envisioned — an awakening of sorts that doesn’t come at all as a surprise. TK is looking back at him, eyes wide and open, inviting Carlos to just ask.

“This isn't our first time here,” Carlos slowly speaks. It isn’t a question — he _knows_. “Weʼve been here before. We were on top of the Camaro and there were green lights in the sky,” he explains, more to himself than to TK. After all, TK isn’t the one who forgot everything. 

“No, it isn’t,” TK confirms. “There was a solar flare, years ago. We almost lost everything. It was that day when I chose to stay. I chose to keep being a firefighter. I chose—” He falters, his voice breaking ever so slightly, the walls Carlos has seen build up just as he walked close already cracking down. 

“You chose _me_ ,” Carlos whispers. He notices that it's not only TKʼs prerogative to finish sentences. 

TK nods. Carlos watches as he looks away, drinking in his features under the pale moonlight. TK is gorgeous. Carlos thinks he hasnʼt seen beauty in his life — nothing compares to TK. 

Maybe this is what heʼs been missing. 

_Scratch that_ , he thinks. _I know this is what Iʼve been missing_.

Following his gut, Carlos slides past TK and climbs on top of the Camaro. Or at least he tries to — his crutch is an obstacle and he stumbles. TK lunges forward, catching him with a hand on his arm and an arm around his waist. It’s a small, simple gesture, but it changes something in Carlos. 

For he feels a surge of energy coursing through his body, up his spine, making his limbs tingle. And as the feeling lingers, Carlos begins to remember. There are moments that come back unbridled, hitting him with the force of a freight train that cannot be stopped — everything he has remembered so far, every single bad memory that he’s recovered, is being complemented by its own fix-up. There are moments that Carlos thought were just a bad memory, but they all make sense now — the night at the precinct, full with their banter; the date at the bubble tea place, completed with them saving the day; the first night he invited TK for dinner, fixed with a _real_ first date at the honky-tonk.

His life’s starting to fall into place, once again, even though everythingʼs rushed and there’s almost no time to breathe between images as they attack him — everything he can think of, every question he might have had about his lost decade, comes barrelling in. Among the chaos reigning in his brain, an image ignites a spark. 

The velvety box he had hidden away in his socks drawer, ready when TK would be. He now remembers the rest of that night, the fear he felt when TK left crying, the sheer terror when he realized it wasn’t TK who had entered the condo once again.

Although the bad memories keep mingling with the good ones in the ripples and swirls that reign in his mind right now, Carlos feels more secure in his skin at this moment than he’s felt since waking up. He feels like he could take over the world.

He’s invincible now, because he isn’t alone. He has TK by his side, now and forever. It’s so clear now that he’s allowed all his defences to crumble down — Carlos fits in with TK in a way that only the best of poets have deigned to write about. 

When he feels like he won’t fall over while his head keeps spinning, Carlos dares to look over at TK, who’s staring at him in awe. “Carlos?” he mutters, insecure. He seems so small and fragile. 

“I can't believe I forgot that I wanted to spend eternity with you,” Carlos states, not one to beat around the bush, not when heʼs wasted so much time. 

“What? Do you—do you remember?” 

Carlos squirms in TKʼs arms, twisting until heʼs looking at him. “Have I ever told you that you're adorable when you're confused?” 

TK laughs heartily, a background wetness coloring his sound, and he shakes his head before leaning in and stopping so close to Carlos that they’re sharing puffs of breath. 

“I love you,” Carlos says, now sure that this is exactly the missing piece of his puzzle. “I love you, I love you, I love you, I lo—” 

“I love you too,” TK cuts him. “Now let me help you or else you'll end up on the ground.” 

“I believe you still owe me an answer,” Carlos demands cheekily, finally comfortable in his own skin. “About eternity, I mean.” 

TK huffs out a laugh and squeezes Carlosʼ arm where his fingers have been resting. “I have been waiting for you to ask me again for ages. I feared we would never—” 

“But we will. Believe me, we have all the time in the world. I don't want to be apart from you ever again.”

“My answer is yes, Carlos. Always yes.”

Carlos knows he still has a tough path to follow until he’s completely recovered — if that ever comes to happen. He remembers Dr. Martinson telling him that the chances for a full recovery — for his memories to come back unscathed and perfect, just like they were before he was assaulted in his own home — are slim. Carlos knows there will be rough patches and obstacles to overcome. But looking down at TK’s green, open eyes, Carlos believes that he can deal with the end of the world, once again, if he has TK Strand by his side.

They will have time to talk. They will bare their souls and apologize and atone for sins they really didn't commit but felt responsible for anyway. But for now, Carlos is content with lying down on the hood of the Camaro — _his_ Camaro — and holding hands with TK while they make wishes under the starry skies. He has everything he needs now, in this exact moment. 

Life. Love. A future.


End file.
